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This article was originally published in the June 2023 edition of the SABR Black Sox Scandal Committee Newsletter.   First baseman Hal Chase was implicated in the Black Sox Scandal and the subject of many accusations of game-fixing during his major-league career. But how crucial was his role in the fixing of the 1919 World […]

On June 17, 1994, the nation was glued to the live broadcast of police chasing a white Ford Bronco on Los Angeles’ Interstate 405. In the home clubhouse 2,300 miles away, the Cleveland Indians were no less riveted as they prepared for a match against the Boston Red Sox. Never confused for an intellectual titan, […]

The baseball epitaph for Deadball Era right-hander Del Mason might well be the familiar: Minor League Star/Major League Bust. Twice the best pitcher of a minor-league circuit, Mason was a disappointment in ensuing trials with the Washington Senators (1904) and Cincinnati Reds (1906-1907). In retrospect, it appears that Mason lacked that extra level of pitching […]

Baseball fans generally remember players who are involved in some of game’s most famous events. The same can be assumed of players who are the first to accomplish a particular feat in the game. However, George Hall was both a central figure in one of major-league baseball’s earliest scandals and the first major-league player to […]

“He was the greatest manager I ever played for, perhaps the greatest manager who ever lived, and that includes managers in the big leagues. I’ve never played for a guy who could get more out of every ballplayer than he could. He knew how to communicate with everybody and to treat every player as an […]

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” The Bible may not have been referring to anything as crass as a baseball career, but this one sentence serves to describe Barry Bonds very well. A stellar career, rich, famous, holding many records, but his […]

Nicknamed “Moose” because of his 6-foot-5, 215-pound stature, Mike Marshall spent the bulk of his 11-year (1981-1991) major-league career with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Batting and throwing right-handed, he was primarily a right fielder, but with a number of games at first base and in left as well. During his nine seasons with the Dodgers, […]

Through 2024, over 23,000 players have played baseball in the major leagues; only 152 were born in Mexico. Fernando Valenzuela stands above them all. One of the game’s brightest and most beloved stars over the course of his 17-season MLB pitching career (1980-1991, 1993-1997), Valenzuela’s 173 victories, six All-Star selections, and 41.5 career WAR topped […]

Dominican infielder Luis Ortiz forged a life in baseball. He began his career in pro ball in 1991 with the Boston Red Sox organization and made it to the top level with Boston in 1993. He got into 60 big-league games for the Red Sox and Texas Rangers from 1993 through 1996. Then after a […]

Like Bob Caruthers, Jack Stivetts, and Guy Hecker, right-hander Dave Foutz embodied a singular 19th-century baseball species: the staff ace so adept with the bat that he was often penciled into the lineup on his pitching off-days. In fact, after a thumb injury reduced his hurling effectiveness, Foutz spent the latter part of his career […]

The man who broadcast Jackie Robinson’s first season with the Dodgers recalled that, as a boy in Sanford, Florida, “I saw black men tarred and feathered by the Ku Klux Klan and forced to walk the streets. I had grown up in a completely segregated world.” Red Barber confessed that when he learned the Dodgers […]

In 1978 Cincinnati Reds’ manager Sparky Anderson, referring to the San Francisco Giants’ mound corps, said, “That’s the best pitching staff in baseball and Knepper is their best pitcher.”1 A year later, future Hall of Famer Willie McCovey echoed this sentiment when he compared his club’s rotation to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ fearsome staffs of […]

His potential was glimpsed when future Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan, months removed from his Rookie League debut in 1965, was said to have the ability to “throw as hard as Dick Selma.”1 That fall, Eddie Stanky, who managed Selma in the Florida Instructional League, claimed the right-handed hurler could become “the best relief pitcher […]

Alan Embree was a left-handed reliever who pitched for 16 seasons of major-league ball and was a member of six teams that went to the postseason, going to the World Series twice – first with the 1995 Cleveland Indians and later with the triumphant 2004 Boston Red Sox. Embree worked in 882 regular-season games, with […]

Fred Schulte played center field for the pennant-winning 1933 Washington Senators. His three-run homer in Game Five of the World Series against the Giants pulled the Senators even. But New York won on a 10th-inning homer by Mel Ott that tipped off Schulte’s glove. The victory gave the Giants the championship. In his 11-year big-league […]

San Francisco Giants general manager Brian Sabean speaks during the World Series parade on October 31, 2014. (SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS)   With their World Series triumphs in 2010, 2012, and 2014, the San Francisco Giants accomplished what no other National League team since the St. Louis Cardinals in 1946 had been able to do: win […]

Charlie England’s baseball story is intertwined with the vagaries of growing up as an African-American in North Carolina in the Jim Crow era and beyond. His brief tenure with the Newark Eagles was bookended by longer careers as a college and semipro baseball player and later as a college coach, mentor, and much-lauded community leader […]

A bright future appeared to lie ahead for Boston Braves outfielder Max West after he became a major-league regular in 1938 at the age of 21 and was the team’s top offensive performer a year later. Following a memorable appearance in the 1940 All-Star Game, when he hit a home run to win the contest, […]

At the start of spring training in 1974, longtime Detroit sportswriter Joe Falls had a problem. He could not decide which Tiger player was his favorite. He called it a “tossup” between veteran Ike Brown and second-year outfielder Dick Sharon. Falls wrote presciently that Brown, who would play the final two games of his major-league career […]

When the 1952 season ended, Hank Sauer, the heavy-hitting left fielder of the Chicago Cubs, had enjoyed a career year. Even though he averaged just .213 with three homers and seven RBIs during the month of September (due to a neck injury), the 35-year-old right-handed batting slugger was tied with the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Ralph Kiner […]

“Times of adversity make you stronger. And sometimes those times make you so tired that when your son says to you, ‘Dad, I want to be there at the last game you pitch,’ you tell him, ‘Kid, you might have been there already.’”1 — Bret Saberhagen on August 8, 2001, one day after his last […]

Charlie Eakle, meter reader, Was a part-time major-leaguer. When his two-game trial was done, ’Twas back to work where he’d begun.   According to a contemporary report, Charlie Eakle played two major-league games with the 1915 Baltimore Terrapins of the Federal League while simultaneously holding down a full-time job with Baltimore’s gas and electric company. […]

During the winter of 1935-1936 Connie Mack completed the destruction of his last winning dynasty. Since capturing his third straight pennant in 1931, Mack had traded or sold six of his regular position players and his top three pitchers to raise the cash he needed to keep his Philadelphia Athletics afloat during the Depression. The […]

Early in the 1979 season, Kiko Garcia became Baltimore’s primary shortstop. He supplanted eight-time Gold Glover Mark Belanger, whom manager Earl Weaver described as “the best friend the pitchers on this ball club have ever had.”1 Yet even at the best of times, Belanger was a light hitter, and he endured the worst struggle of […]